Drone Spraying for Grapes in California

Vineyard spraying runs on a precise calendar: bloom fungicides for powdery mildew, insecticide for leafhopper and mealybug through the season, foliar nutrition at veraison, and a pre-harvest pass for botrytis and sour rot. Powdery mildew windows are tight and unforgiving.

Drone application flies a mapped route down each row, applying an even volume into the canopy without driving a rig through narrow vineyard spacing — and it flies when the ground is wet.

Vineyard rows are narrow and the canopy is vertical, so a drone's down-airflow and tuned droplet size deliver product into the canopy rather than drifting into the next row.

On hillside and coastal vineyards, a drone reaches slope a tractor can't safely travel, with no compaction on fragile soils.

Virelo flies vineyards from the San Joaquin Valley to the Central Coast, tuning droplet size and flight height for the vertical, narrow canopy that makes vineyard coverage a challenge. Our pilots coordinate with your PCA to time powdery mildew fungicides to the bloom-to-veraison window and pre-harvest botrytis to the right stage, with GPS-guided flights down each row.

On hillside and coastal vineyards, a drone reaches slope a tractor cannot safely travel, with no compaction on fragile soils. On irrigated valley vineyards, a drone flies when the ground is too wet for a rig, which is often the day a mildew pass is most needed, and the down-airflow drives product into the canopy rather than drifting into the next row.